More End-Times Stuff from the Blogosphere
Friday, August 22, 2008 at 01:25PM 
If you are not hearing about the rapture in your church, then you can blame the "secular humanists," says Tim LaHaye. According to LaHaye, too many ministers don't talk about biblical prophecy anymore because they received a "secular" education. I knew I shouldn't have gone to a state university--they must have been the ones who taught me to "spiritualize" the Bible. Good ole Tim, he means well, but he's clueless. Click here:
U.S. churches shun end-times preaching (OneNewsNow.com)
If this woman ever moves to California, she could well be our next governor or US Senator. She's certainly as qualified as the current lot. Click
here: South Ossetia conflict: Concerned US citizen gets her Georgias confused -
Telegraph
That's right, blame it on the accountants . . . Why did ELCA lose 64,000 members in 2007? It is not because people are leaving, it is because ELCA churches are actually keeping more accurate records. Right! Of course, the sixteen consecutive year decline in membership has nothing to do with ELCA's embrace of homosexuality, higher criticism, and a failure to preach the gospel. If you don't give people a reason to stay (i.e. preach the gospel, and argue for the exclusivity of the Christian truth claim), why should they stay? Much better to sleep in on Sunday than attend the local community center masquerading as a church. Click
here: Lutheran denomination continues to lose members - USATODAY.com
Reader Comments (15)
I take end-times prophecy literally.
And I think I Timothy 1:6-7, in speaking of those who stray from the truth, is literally speaking of dispensationalists like Tim LaHaye.
Yes, I think that though he wants to be a teacher, Tim LaHaye LITERALLY does not understand what he is saying, and that he LITERALLY does not understand the matters about which he makes confident assertions. He just doesn't get it.
So there.
Churches should be spending more time in preaching the Word and administering the sacraments. As the Word of God is proclaimed, and the sacraments are administered properly, the Kingdom of God is moving forward, pushing back the kingdom of darkness until the second coming.
We can spend more time on "end time stuff" in our adult Bible study classes!
I know of at least one amillennial church (and there are certainly more) where you'll hear a lot about the blessed hope.
Are you sure? When amils talk about eschatology, it doesn't sound like what you get when dispensationalists do.
Try this one, audio from Michael Horton, a link I found at monergism.com: http://www.highdeserturc.org/media/070419_mh_lastdays.mp3
If the pastor's emphasis is on Exegetical Preaching, he will deal with "End Times" issues at the appropriate time. But to assume that if a preacher isn't spending the bulk of his time on Eschatology because he has a secular education is nonsense. How does he even make that leap?
Matt Holst
What can I say?
So confident, so sure of himself, yet no clue how to read the Bible literally.
No, that was no typo.
That is the strange irony for me. LaHaye incessantly charges us of not believing and teaching the Literal Interpretation of the Bible.
Ever heard LaHaye teach Mt.24?
Far from a literal interpretation....
Even More, we are preaching the New Jerusalem, the Church being made the priests of God, the salt and light of the nations, going out making disciples of the nations, as Christ has come to build his church, makikng all things new, God reconciling the world to himself via the gospel in the church. while he is teaching people to speculate about signs of Christ's coming, about a seven year tribulation, discovering the lost ark, red heifers etc. etc.
They were clueless as to what Reformed Presbyterian is...
After they were shocked to hear some of our strong similarities [I parked at the similarities and avoided telling them they still believe in the Catholic infant baptism / baptismal regeneration position].
One said, I had no idea how similar we are [that's because I also didn't tell them we believe in an actual atonement]....
Any way, I closed by saying "I'll assure you of one thing."
What's that?
We are alot closer to you than the ELCA."
Since no other Lutherans monitoring this blog are jumping on this I guess I might as well pick it up (sigh)...
The belief that Lutherans (confessional ones, that is, such as WELS and some LCMS) have about baptism is NOT the same as that espoused by the Roman Catholic church. Their belief is that baptism literally washes away original sin - from that point onward an RC continues to abdicate sin by participation in as many as seven different sacraments, the principle of which is, of course communion, in which they erroneously and blasphemously re-sacrifice Christs body and blood over and over again.
Confessional (or maybe "reformational" would be better) Lutherans view baptism as one of God's visible means of grace to his Church (communion and the Word are the others). In baptism one is "regenerated," even as an infant by God working through the water and the Word. This is scripturally supported as follows: Regeneration and the remission of sins (John 3:5; Titus 3:5; Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3; Acts 2:38; Acts 22:16; Ephesians 5:26), salvation and participation in all the benefits that come from Christ, to whom we are joined in baptism (Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21; Romans 6:3; Galatians 3:27; 1 Corinthians 12:13), a good conscience toward God or certainty of faith regarding the forgiveness of sins (1 Peter 3:21; 2 Corinthians 1:21), and newness of life (Romans 6:3; Colossians 2:11).
While Reformed and Lutheran (again, sadly, make that "confessional" in both cases) do have their differences in beliefs about how Christ is present in the elements of communion and about this baptismal regeneration, and in views about predestination, they do indeed probably have more in common with each other than any other denomination. [So much so, that sometimes I think I'm reading a Lutheran sermon when I read one of Dr. Riddlebargers!]
But one important thing that confessional Reformed and Lutherans do have in common - and it's probably the most important one - is a high view of scripture. Sadly the ELCA among the Lutherans has drifted away from this; many Presbyterians have done the same (as frequently cited in this blog); and the RC never had a high view of scripture to begin with, but prefer tradition, church counsels, and non-Canonical books around which to center their beliefs, which has led them into all sorts of stray directions.
Go to the WELS.Net website. Click on Q & A. Go back about four questions. (It must have been Saturday's question.) The question is: Salvation: Does Baptism actually give the Holy Spirit? It is from a person that is trying to resolve this issue by looking at the Presbyterian or Lutheran views of Baptism.
It is exactly what you are looking for. It will enable you to understand the Lutheran position, and to present it accurately.
1.People like Tim La Haye have made it look so silly.
2. The date-setters have made preaching on the Second Advent seem dangerous.
3. Extreme inconsistency in exegesis.
See, the thing is that the dispensationalist scheme, while it sounds so simple, isn't. While we Reformed folk have a more-or-less consistent grammatico-historical approach, which involves taking into account things like the book's place in the history of redemption and its genre, the Dispensationalist just says: "if the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense', and takes the book in isolation. And if it's in the Old Testament, heaven forbid that he should takes the New Testament into account (funny, that's how George Adam Smith was able to deny that Isaiah 53 was a prophecy of the Crucifixion... oh, but he was a liberal, so he was just following our nasty non-dispensationalist, non-pre-mil scheme consistently:) ). As the pastor under whom I was converted once said: "Are you really going to take a number in revelation so literally?"
As Mr. Spurgeon said, the 'plain meaning' is quite often not the right meaning. That must be arrived at by proper exegesis.